Before
by AryYuna
Summary: Because, before it all happened, they had each other.
1. Identity

_Charles is my favourite character. He's always been, ever since the animated series, and I grimaced when I saw the First Class poster with a very much not-bald and too-hot McAvoy playing him, but boy did I change my mind! I loved this different Professor X, I loved his friendship with Erik, his soft romance with Moira… but what I loved the most was his relationship with Raven – which was the most un-canonical thing in the movie, but fuck it all, it was AMAZING and I loved it._

 _I used Logan's words in DOFP as time frame, though I still think there's no way that McAvoy can look 51 in XMA and I still wanna see how the hell the lazy and sloppy idiots that wrote the XMFC end credits passed elementary school._

 _This fic is unbetaed. English is not my first language, so I hope you'll forgive my mistakes for the sake of the story – if you point them out to me, I'll see to fix them right away._

 _Enjoy! :D_

* * *

Charles had a skewed perception of his powers. For one, he didn't seem to realize how completely unnerving it was to know you had no privacy even in the sanctuary that was your own mind; and he didn't understand how creepy it was to have all your needs and desires anticipated before you even knew they existed.

Truth was it wasn't he who had a wrong idea of his powers: it was everybody else.

Being a telepath could be fascinating in theory, but it wasn't as much about reading other peoples' thoughts as it was about _not_ to. It was about finding your own feeling and beliefs in the chaos of voices screaming their love and hate and rage and fear and happiness and sadness in your mind. It was about finding the _you_ among the _them_.

Nine-years-old Charles didn't even realize what was happening when he started hearing voices in his head. It had been a low and constant buzz, at first; no words discernible, like radio statics; annoying, yes, but nothing more. It had rapidly gotten worse, though: the voices had started becoming louder, more demanding; sudden feelings of anger or joy or dread would assault him, and he would find himself spacing out without realizing, his eyes lost in the distance as his mind tried to process the too many inputs. By the time his tenth birthday rolled in, headaches and nosebleeds and sudden loss of consciousness had added to his already sorry state, and his too young brain had just retreated into itself, too confused, too overwhelmed by thousand of screaming voices to understand what _he_ was.

He spent those dark days – months, years – alone in his room, unable to move, to function; his only human contact were the maids that made his bed and served him lunch, but they kept their eyes averted, their steps hurried so they could retreat to the safety of the rest of the mansion as soon as possible. Their whispers blended in with all the thoughts in his mind, their fears became his own, and he would stare in the distance seeing himself through their eyes – _wrong, weird, freak_. His mother avoided him, ashamed: already more and more distant since her beloved Brian's death, she'd found consolation for her son's disturbing condition at the bottom of a bottle – away from his vacant eyes, his mindlessly repeating words that didn't belong to him, her own inadequacy as a mother. She'd threatened to have him committed, at first, but then stopped caring at all; Charles hadn't understood her words among the chaos that filled his mind, but he'd felt her grief, her regrets, her hopelessness, her wish that he'd never been born as if they were his own – or were they? What was his? _Who was he?_

As time passed, he was left to his own devices for longer stretches of time – what purpose would it serve to daily dust the shelves and change the bed linens when the kid didn't ever leave the room and nobody visited him? Distance, though, made the voice in his head more bearable, the general apathy of the other inhabitants of the huge mansion easily drowned by his own sense of solitude, and one day he finally managed to wake up and see his room through his own eyes – because he had eyes to see the world, and ears to hear sounds, and hands to touch things, and feet to carry him where _he_ wanted. He sat up in his bed, eyes scanning the space around _him_ ; the low buzz in his head spoke of a Sunday morning when all the inhabitants of the mansion had probably gone to the church or wherever, leaving him behind – _forgotten_ – and the world beyond the gates was too far away to bother him.

He tentatively got up, the whispers easy to ignore as Charles approached the mirror and looked at the twelve-year-old boy that he'd turned into. The paleness of his skin was new, but his freckles, his blue eyes were the same he remembered since _before_ – and how long ago had it been? It felt like a lifetime, his memory more similar to a dream than reality. He touched his fingertips in the mirror, mesmerized by the knowledge that he did in fact _exist_ , and had thoughts and feelings separated from those that had crowded his mind for so long. He closed his eyes, focusing his attention on the whispers in his head, trying to give them a name, and then opened them again, startled. And he smiled a relieved and sad smile, because he wasn't crazy. _He wasn't crazy._

After that, he started building shields around his mind, around the thoughts and feelings he now recognized as his – _his_ pain, _his_ loneliness, _his_ sadness – savouring them, cherishing the knowledge that he too _existed_ , among all the other minds. It took time: with nobody to tell him what was happening to him and why and how to _control_ it, nobody to hold him and help him and fill him with love, it was only through trial and error that he managed to separate his mind from the thousand others.

The first day he left his room to venture into the rest of his own home, he was greeted by shock and distrust, to which he replied with a gracious smile. With time, the wariness that had accompanied his return to the world slowly thawed into polite distance: the young master was saluted with bowed heads and respectful questions, and if the minds around him were still on edge every time he entered a room, Charles could finally pretend he didn't notice.

It was too late to win his mother back, though; after all, she'd been lost to him long before his powers had appeared. After his seemingly miraculous recovery, their relationship followed much the same path as that with the servants: she politely nodded to him, ordered the maid to buy him new toys or books or clothes when he needed, occasionally asked him about his day. Charles convinced himself it was enough; he knew she would have loved him, had their lives been different.

She wasn't a bad person, it was just that she didn't understand.

* * *

(XXX)

 _Of course, nobody has any idea what being a telepath is really like. My biggest pet peeve, though, is that there's no set canon about Charles' powers, and every author (both in canon and fanon) seems to have their own vision of them – so, well, I decided to add myself to the mix. I'm pretty sure this version too has some roots in canon somewhere, but with Marvel "canon" is such a meaningless word lol_

 _This fic (which I see as more of a collection than a story) is three chapters long and I've already written them all. I will post the second chapter in_ _a couple of days._


	2. Fairytales

_I always hope to receive comments when I post, but somehow I'm always surprised when it actually happens XD A HUGE thank you to_ bella _(I know, chapters are reeeeally short this time… but I'm updating faster, so that kinda makes up for it, I guess? XD it's just three chapter in total, though) and_ Coyote Blues _!_

* * *

Raven had never believed in fairytales; they were for pretty girls, ones with a smooth skin and soft hair. What prince would ever kiss a blue girl with yellow eyes to wake her up from a cursed sleep? And yet, when she'd seen the huge mansion beyond the ornate gates, her first thought had been that it looked just like an enchanted castle.

Sneaking inside had been easy; no-one had stopped her during her short trek among the elegant corridors – maybe the castle was abandoned? But it was so well kept, she mused, staring in awe at all the golden frames of the paintings, at the fancy vases, at the rich drapes that obscured tall windows. She walked slowly, as if afraid to disrupt the illusion. A photo hanging on the wall showed a beautiful lady in a rich dress smiling politely; next to it, the same lady stood next to a boy about her age. Raven smiled wistfully, envying the lucky boy who had a mother; she had no idea who her mother was, but surely she hadn't loved her daughter, since she'd abandoned the blue baby at the orphanage – probably disgusted with her appearance, the other kids had teased her.

She shook herself out of her thoughts, setting back onto her task. There was a fridge in the kitchen, full of all kinds of food and drinks. It was so much, Raven didn't even know where to start; it would be enough to feed all the children at the orphanage – but she would never share anything she found with them, because they were mean and she'd run away from them.

A noise started her and made her instinctively take the appearance of the woman in the photo. When the young son walked in armed with a baseball bat, ready to defend the house from burglars, she smiled the same smile she'd seen in the picture and sent him back to bed like she imagined a mother would.

Distrust morphed on the boy's face.

"Who are you? And what have you done with my mother?"

She was about to repeat her offer of hot chocolate when a voice of which she couldn't identify the source filled her mind. It sounded disturbingly similar to the boy's.

 _My mother has never set foot in this kitchen in her life. And she certainly never made me a hot chocolate. Unless you count ordering the maid to do it._

Her control slipped, she could feel her body shrink into that of the ten-year-old she really was – the _blue_ ten-year-old she really was.

The boy, though, just widened his eyes in surprise. And smiled to her.

"You're not scared of me?" she asked. Maybe it really was just an illusion; some spell that a fairy had casted onto the castle.

"I always believed I couldn't be the only one in the world. The only person who was different. And here you are." The boy took a step toward her. "Charles Xavier." He solemnly offered her his hand to shake.

"Raven," she timidly answered.

"You're hungry and alone," he stated, and she wondered how he knew. "Take whatever you want. We've got lots of food, you don't have to steal. In fact, you never have to steal again."

And Raven didn't care anymore if it was a spell. Maybe fairytales really did exist, after all.

He brought her to his room, and they slept side by side in a bed big enough to contain four more children, among fresh and soft linens that smelled of soap. In the morning, he announced he would introduce her to the staff working at the mansion; she'd assumed the look of a blond-haired, pink-faced little girl to make things easier for him, and he'd smiled at her thoughtfulness, making her feel appreciated.

The boy hadn't needed to ask for permission to have his new friend – _friend_ , Raven repeated that word to herself over and over, savouring its taste in her mouth; she'd never had a friend before – stay at the mansion: he'd told the maid to prepare a room for her and to set the table for two when it was time for breakfast, and the woman had just nodded and obeyed. The young prince of the castle had limitless power over his little reign.

"Do they know?" Raven asked as he'd passed her a buttered piece of toast. There was so much food on the table; did they expect two children to eat that much? Or were they expecting someone else? But no-one ever came.

"About my gift?" The boy poured tea in two china cups and offered her one. "No." He looked sad. "I tried to tell my mother, but it was too hard to explain and I gave up," he answered hiding a world of pain behind his words. She wondered where the pretty lady from the photo was, why she wasn't having breakfast with her son; why she'd never made hot chocolate for him. Mothers were supposed to love their children, right? Unless they were blue and disgusting like her.

"You're not disgusting," Charles gently reprimanded her unvoiced thoughts, but she just couldn't wrap her mind around that strange situation.

 _Maybe it's because he too is different_ , she reasoned to herself, and then felt guilty because maybe he had heard that as well. But he didn't comment; and she thought that he'd probably come to the same conclusion; there were no dragons or evil witches: the main villain to this fairytale was an unloving mother that refused to acknowledge her very child's existence.

She ate her breakfast, and then Charles asked the maid to take the two of them to town so Raven could buy new clothes.

"It will be easier to keep your disguise if you don't have to focus on clothes as well," he reasoned, and for a moment Raven felt disappointed: she'd thought she could be herself with him. But he hastened to reassure her: "It's only when there are grown-ups around. You can be blue when you're with me."

Maybe, with a pretty pink dress, even a blue girl could look like a princess.

* * *

(XXX)

 _This was actually the first chapter I wrote. It was actually supposed to be a different story entirely, but it just didn't work, you know? So I started writing about Charles and his just manifesting powers and the two stories merged into one._

 _Anyway, I LOVED the kitchen scene at the beginning of XMFC. I want an entire movie on that scene XD_


	3. You and me, against the world

**You and me, against the world**

After his illness – that was how the servants had taken to refer to the dark three years that had forced him in his room, too lost in his mind to interact with the world – he'd been assigned a private tutor to further his education until he was old enough to leave for college. While this actually gave him more time to spend with Raven, it also meant that she was his only company, like he was hers. Not that he minded: she was good company – she was smart and funny, and just as happy as he was to finally have someone who could understand what it felt like to be different – and Charles was happy with her. He taught her games and asked the maid to buy her toys, and nobody ever questioned his requests, both because of his wealth and position and because they still feared him the way people fear that they cannot understand. He also read to her: she knew the letters and was able to write her own name, but had never imagined she could learn more – from what he'd gathered from her stray thoughts and the few words she'd spent about her past, blue children at the orphanage hadn't deserve to be taught like normal ones; even what few stories she knew she'd just overheard as they were told to the other kids.

Charles lent her his books and guided her through learning more complex words, and then numbers, and additions, and multiplication tables. She wanted to learn how to write his name, and he was so touched when she asked that he hugged her tightly. Raven froze on the spot, unsure what to do; she'd never been hugged before, but he taught her that as well.

"I will ask mother to adopt you officially," he told her one day, a bright smile on his face. "That way, you can go to school and meet other children, if you like. And you can have a last name and a family."

Raven looked skeptical, and Charles could feel her confusion about that mysterious mother – so different from what she'd always imagined and dreamt of – that, in all the time she'd been living at the Xavier mansion, had never crossed paths with her or her son. He was actually unsure himself of what reaction he would get from the distant woman, but he hoped the new addition to the family would help her as well, shake her out of the cocoon of sorrow she'd wrapped herself in – the same cocoon she tried to escape taking part in frivolous parties and meaningless laughter, drowning the grief that couldn't be ignored in booze. Charles hadn't seen his mother for weeks, now, though he could feel her moving about in her quarters, and her despair would suddenly strike him and leave him subdued for hours afterwards.

Raven always regarded him with sadness when it happened, and while she politely restrained from making any comment or inquiry, her thoughts were so loud he often couldn't block them out completely. His powers had grown considerably since that fateful day when he'd first been aware of his own mind among the others; he could now feel the minds of all the inhabitants of Salem Center, and if he so much as lost focus for a moment he would risk to lose himself among them all like before. He'd had to strengthen his shields, raise them taller and thicker, keep his mind in as much order as possible so as not to accidentally project his own feelings and thoughts and involuntarily influence all those around him. When he'd made the butler serve cookies for lunch without directly asking for it, Charles had been so disturbed by his own power he'd burst into tears like a baby, and Raven had cried with him, overwhelmed by a misery that didn't belong to her, the cookies forgotten and never eaten on the table.

His newfound talent proved to be useful in their situation, though: her control over her mutation wasn't perfect – she was just a little girl, one who'd been as alone and lost as he, after all – and when she was too tired or too distracted, too immersed in a game or a book she was reading, keeping up the blond disguise proved to be too much effort and she unconsciously reverted to her natural red hair and scaled blue skin. It wasn't a problem when it was just the two of them, but the adults were another thing entirely: they couldn't understand. The first time it happened, the maid's screams made Charles panic, causing his powers to leak out, unleashed; the woman forgot what she'd seen and left the room with a hollow expression in her eyes, without a look to the boy swaying on his feet and losing blood from his nose. Raven was scared and horrified by it, but he reassured her everything was fine, and she promised she would be more careful next time.

When Sharon Xavier finally met Raven and informed her she would immediately start the procedures for the adoption, the little girl had been living at the mansion for six months. The woman hugged her new daughter in a way she hadn't her own son since her late husband's death, and then left the room with the same empty look the maid always had after Charles' intervention. The boy collapsed to the floor, a content smile on his face.

Later that night, as the two kids played undisturbed in front of the fireplace, Raven asked Charles why he didn't use his powers to make his mother love him.

The boy raised his head from the chess set lying between their prone forms on the floor, and his control over his powers must've slipped for a moment, because when he met her eyes he saw the same devastating sadness he felt in his heart reflected in them. She cried without knowing why, and he held her, caressing her hair and whispering soft words to her ear as if those weren't his tears she was spilling.

"It wouldn't be right," he just answered.

So the woman went on with her life as if she'd never been a mother. And if, when she announced she was getting married again, Charles was so shocked he couldn't even feign a smile, nobody noticed or cared, except the little sister he'd welcomed in his house: she took him by his hand, unconcerned with the smiling woman waiting for congratulations, and took him to his room, where she hugged him like he'd taught her.

They had each other, and it was enough.

* * *

(XXX)

 _And here was the last chapter. A big thank you to all that read my fic, I hope you all enjoyed it *hearts*_

 _Title to this chapter was from XMFC: the night before Cuba, Raven tells Charles "_ _I used to think it was going to be you and me against the world_ _". I didn't particularly enjoy the scene, it felt forced and out of place for both of them, but as I said I loved the relationship between the siblings and that line embodies it perfectly. And I think I'm gonna write more about them, they're just too beautiful for fangirl!me XD_


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